Thanks, Polity, for sending me advance copy of this book by Geoff Pullum. I’ve often felt there’s an absence of a reliable introduction to English grammar for intelligent laypeople, assuming no prior knowledge. This is it. It’s brilliant, by a giant of modern linguistics.

Welcome back Johnson, The Economist’s language column, not Boris. ⁦Lane Greene⁩ economist.com/culture/2024/0…

I scored 43 out of 50 points on Dateline, The Economist history game!

🎯⚪️⚪️🎯⚪️

Can you do better? economist.com/dateline

As Pedro Sánchez's new minority government gets going, this wide-ranging Real Instituto Elcano report by William Chislett is an excellent primer on the challenges ahead:

realinstitutoelcano.org/en/work-docume…

For anyone needing to get up to speed with Spain, I can think of no better way to spend an hour than with William Chislett's great sweeping working paper, with its frank assessments of what works, and what needs work.
realinstitutoelcano.org/en/work-docume…

Thoughts on booming Madrid: economist.com/europe/2024/02…

'...an alternative to Strunk and White...' Praise indeed for Lane Greene and his Writing with Style Profile Books

The history of The Economist's style guide, from a modest 1952 style sheet through the first public book in 1985, all the way to WRITING WITH STYLE. economist.com/news/2024/01/2…

Is beauty in the ear of the beholder? On “The Intelligence”, Lane Greene dissects what makes a language attractive econ.st/3HvMKyb

Wonderful to see #JohnMcWhorter mention WRITING WITH STYLE by Lane Greene in his latest The New York Times column on plagiarism: “It’s a lovely book, by the way. I vigorously recommend it as an alternative to Strunk and White’s THE ELEMENTS OF STYLE.” ✍️nytimes.com/2024/01/23/opi…

In case you missed That Word Chat's episode on 2023 Words of the Year, it's now on YouTube. Featuring Grant Barrett, Lane Greene, Lynne Murphy, Wendalyn Nichols, Peter Sokolowski, and Kelly 🔥 By Any Means 🔥 Wright + me repping American Dialect Society. #ThatWordChat #woty2023 youtube.com/watch?v=Ow5I5A…

If you have recently completed a doctorate, are working on contemporary Spain, and want to spend a year at St Antony’s College (Oxford), this may be of interest:

The Dutch word for a horse breeder is paardenfokker, which gave us this joke…

JFK: What do you do?
Dutchman: I fok horses
JFK: Pardon?
Dutchman: Yes paarden

Read on for more terrible multilingual jokes (a thread)…

The global linguistic landscape has been surveyed and our expert Lane Greene has come to a decision. On “The Intelligence”: our word of the year for 2023 econ.st/47Kemew

DM me if you want to try out the places where the skies are not cloudy all day. (Or reply if I don't follow you yet.)

No hay ningún feed en directo del debate en catalán? Entiendo mejor el catalán que el catalán y el castellano a la vez...

Una conversación con Lane Greene (The Economist) y Sandrine Morel (Le Monde) sobre escritura, el oficio de corresponsal, identidad & más.

Este domingo (16:30) en Hay Festival Esp
Campus Segovia, IE University
shorturl.at/fhyIP

Vivencias de un extranjero! Life as a foreigner! Claudia Durastanti, Lane Greene y David Jiménez nos adentran en las vivencias del “ser de fuera” y del estilo del lenguaje! No te lo pierdas en Hay Festival Esp Segovia! #HaySegovia23 hayfestival.com/p-20728-claudi… Felix Valdivieso IE University